If you aren't an engineer then you should have no say how safe something is.

Oh, and to the even larger idiot who posted earlier, the bomb on Hiroshima did not kill "millions". In fact, we killed far more civilians in Japan through the firebombing of Tokyo (conventional bombs only) than we did with the nuke on Hiroshima.

I was intrigued by the line “approve the reactor applications for unapproved reactor designs”. What other status can there be for a reactor design (or anything else for that matter) before it is approved? By definition, something that has not yet been approved would have to be categorized as unapproved. But, that is minor compared to so many of the other statements in the article.

Oh well, I can only hope this kind of journalism will some day cease. To have any sort of reponsible debate over energy policy and the environment, regardless of where you stand, you need to start with some reasonable standard of accuracy in the information being disseminated.

First, the engineers were asked if there were pipes carrying radioactive fluids. They said “No, there are no underground pipes carrying radioactive fluids”. Fluids = LIQUIDS.

The pipes the tritium emerged from are pipes carrying non-condensible gasses and air. Emphasis on GASES.

You have to understand that engineers answer the questions they are asked. Especially if someone is being adversarial with them, they sometimes will not volunteer more than just the facts. But the facts are all that is required of them.

BTW: Wind hasn’t solved the old “no wind problem”, and solar hasn’t solved the “nighttime problem” yet. So, BOTTOM LINE: If you close Vermont Yankee, you replace it with COAL. Coal power kills 25,000 Americans a year through lung disease, and causes 40,000 American heart attacks a year.

Starting “should the reactor lose enough coolant” — do you really think that’s what’s happening in this situation? You think this leak is of the reactor’s coolant? That the reactor is slowly leaking coolant and the operators are powerless to remedy this? Over the course of weeks? And they didn’t put the reactor into shutdown to play it safe? I don’t think so. As Rod pointed out, even the consultant to the legislature who worked his best to convince them to shut the plant down doesn’t think that what you’ve described is happening. Why then, did you put that in your article? I’m afraid I must agree with Finrod, that you have deliberately attempted to misinform people.

The tritium leak, as it is now, has been repeatedly described by public health officials as “not a public health risk”. (Or, as you erroneously put it, a “threat to public health.”) That’s not to say it shouldn’t be fixed, and the NRC has already issued a Demand for Information. They are an independent regulator, I do not know why you think they bend to the will of the nuclear industry. Do you think that you are better positioned as a correspondent for a San Fransisco newspaper to determine whether a nuclear power plant is safe than a commission comprised of engineers with a commitment to safety? Their career would probably over if they made any serious error. Can you imagine if your career was over if you made errors in your writing? This would be it for you. This article here is filled with enough lies and distortions to cast doubt on anything else you’d ever write.

Moving on. You bring up that the AP-1000 reactors that Vogtle received loan guarantees for are unapproved technology. Actually, Westinghouse did receive design certification for the AP-1000. What is under review currently by the NRC is an amended design of the AP-1000. Once Westinghouse can adequately demonstrate the safety of the amended design then the NRC will certify it. If that doesn’t happen, Vogtle could also build the original AP-1000. AP-1000s are already under construction in China.

Finally the misinformation by VY employees was determined to be unintentional by an independent investigation.(http://www.entergy.com/News_Room/newsrelease.aspx?NR_ID=169) The employees were referring to “buried pipes”, apparently the legal definition of which is pipes that carry liquid, touch soil, and are part of whole systems. They should have communicated better, as the investigation determined. However, this was not done with malice, as you allege when you use the phrase “attempted coverup”. This investigation was turned over to State Attorney General William Sorrell. So there’s the first bit of evidence in the criminal investigation you talk about. I see that your article was published 25 February, and this press release came on 24 February. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you were indeed trying to produce an accurate story, and this press release I have linked you came out shortly after your deadline to turn in this article of yours.

Mr. Nichols, you should be ashamed of this article. You blatantly stretch the truth (“attempted coverup” is one example), present things in an obviously biased way(excluding independent investigation’s findings, use of phrase “decaying nuclear reactor” and use of only sources that agree with your viewpoint), and include a number of statements that are flat out wrong (your description of the reactor blowing up is the most egregious example). You do yourself and your newspaper no favor by writing something with such a flamboyant disregard of the truth.

I briefly scanned Cathy Garger’s article that you put in your Notes section, which had a section about a tritium leak of 2880 picocuries per liter, which she compares to “288 times” the natural tritium [pre-nuclear age] values of 10-30 picocuries per liter. Does she compare that to the EPA’s limit for drinking water? No, of course not, because that would show that the EPA deems such an amount to be safe to drink!

http://bit.ly/dnwAmn

Even Arnie Gundersen does not describe the source of the tritium in ground water as coming from reactor coolant – he has determined that the most likely source is a system called the “off gas” system, which removes entrained air and other non condensible gases from the condenser. There is no coolant leak and no risk to the public – a person exlusively drinking water at the highest levels measured in the ground water directly under the plant for an entire year would receive an annual dose of about 16 millirem – compared to normal background radiation doses in the US of about 350 millirem. http://bit.ly/bKaDVV

Finally, shutting down Vermont Yankee would inevitably lead to burning more methane and/or coal in plants that dump thousands of TONS of dangerous waste products into the atmosphere every single day through system design features called smokestacks.